In an industry hell-bent on doing more with less and effectively using what it has, where to next for storage vendors determined to sell capacity and management, come what may?

* The current market trends are economically disruptive to storage players that have built a business model on selling under-utilised, hard-to-manage capacity. Just as virtualisation led to the disruption of the traditional x 86 server market, a revolution to next generation technologies is required if the storage market is to continue meeting customers’ demands. Vendors that move quickly to adopt next generation technologies, and meet customer demand to halve purchased capacity while driving up utilisation and reducing management overheads, will find themselves strongly positioned to lead a market that is being pressured to simplify their products while driving down costs. Adam Day, product manager, Sysdba